Rocks may hurt more. But those roses and peonies and chrysanthemums bundled together, he knows, can be every iota as dangerous, as potentially damaging.

“Those flowers, they smell great, eh? They’re pretty. It’s always more fun to get flowers. But you can get caught admiring those flowers.

“When you guys were saying we were lucky to even be in the NHL a year ago we told our guys: Lock out the exterior world.

“This year it’s a different challenge and a tougher challenge. Last year we had to prove we could do it, this year we have to prove we belong.

“So whatever we’re going to read in the paper or see on TV or whatever your neighbour tells you across the backyard fence, smile. Just smile.”

A resigned shrug.

“Rocks or flowers.

“The plan doesn’t change.”

What has changed, inarguably and exponentially, is the environmental bubble that surrounds the Calgary Flames. They’ve been steeling themselves for it since being finally brought to heel by the Anaheim Ducks in early May. On the back of a 20-point regular-season improvement, to a first playoff berth in half a dozen years and then a trip into the second round for only the second time in a decade, they’re all the rage again.

The love affair has been reignited.

Angst has given way to aspiration, fear to fawning, dread to delirium, shadow to sunshine.

Tuesday, golf day, the annual prelude to the opening of a new training camp which, hockey zealots in this town now fervently believe, will serve as another stepping stone nearer the stars.

“Nobody’s going to be patting us on the back for last year this December or January. It’s a business you’ve got to prove yourself every day,” says Hartley, 7:30 a.m., having finished his breakfast out at Country Hills Country Club dining room. “Not every year. Every day. What we did last year, we got paid for it. We had fun with it. It was great. We wouldn’t change it for anything. But it’s over.

“Expectations …” He allows the word to drift away, to evaporate in the air.

“From the inside, they don’t change. After we told the world we were rebuilding two years ago, I didn’t come in the room, Brian Burke didn’t come in the room, nobody came into the room and said ‘We’re rebuilding. So it’s OK to be awful.’ You have to constantly push to be better, to be the best you can be.

“The day I wake up without the intention of winning hockey games, of being better, the day I wake up complacent, I’ll just turn over in bed, go back to sleep and stay home.”

A 10-minute drive from Hartley and Country Hills, due north down Country Hills Blvd., assistant GM Craig Conroy is strolling into the Hamptons clubhouse.

“I mean, obviously,” he acknowledges, “everybody’s wondering ‘Can they do it again or will they slide back?’ So many comebacks, down one goal, two goals, three goals, great OT record.

“People come up now and tell me: ‘So, I’m predicting fourth or fifth in the West.’ And I’m going ‘Uhhhh, the West is tough.’ I mean, L.A. didn’t get in last year, so they’re mad, they get better. Dallas is better. Edmonton’s gonna be better. Winnipeg’s still good.

“What did it take last year? Eighty-one games. And we got in by two points. That just shows you.

But I think that’s why we went out and got Dougie Hamilton, bring in (Michael) Frolik. We want to show people we weren’t satisfied. We’re trying to add pieces. You can’t stand still.

“I think the message leaving after last season was ‘OK, it was great, but everybody’s going to be ready for us next year.’ Which is why I’m sure you’ll see the same kind of camp, a demanding camp, from Bob, like always.

“We’re going to be in the crosshairs.

“So the first five to 10 games? Crucial.”

So much about the 2014-2015 Flames turned out so warm and fuzzy, so effortlessly easy to embrace: From Hartley’s tough-love Jack Adams Award-winning turn to the compounding, confounding comeback wins to the shimmy and shake of Johnny Hockey (trademark goes here), to Mark Giordano’s continuing evolution as a catalytic agent to Kris Russell’s stout-hearted penchant for dropping in front of pellets, to … to, well, got an hour. The list goes on and on.

So, yes, a lot did go right in their world last season but they worked so damn hard and displayed such resiliency that surely no one could begrudge them an extra injection of magic.

“We feel the positive vibes in the city,” acknowledges Hartley. “You can’t go anywhere without people telling you how proud they are of their team. I love this. This is an unbelievable city but it’s not an overly big city so wherever you go, you feel it.

“People make a city. Not the buildings or the weather. The people. And we know these people. They will support us.

“But this is a new year. A different year. We can’t live off what we did last season. It doesn’t guarantee us anything. It doesn’t work that way.”

So it begins, a training camp unlike any in the past half-dozen early autumns. Infused with hope and ambition, with a solid, successful season as a foundation from which to continue implementing the blueprint.

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Fans will be buzzing about the early animosities.
And about the late comeback.
In what was certainly the most scrappy, spirited instalment of the Battle of Alberta in recent memory, the Calgary Flames stormed back with yet another third-period script-flipper in Saturday’s 4-2 victory over the Edmonton Oilers at the Saddledome.